[no subject]

[Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW at MIT-AI>]

cc: BUG-LISPM at MIT-AI

In the version of ZMAIL on system 44.3, with microcode 692, on LISP Machine Six:
(1) There seems to be a bug wherein if you switch files, as the summary for
the new file is being put into the summary window, the summary for the old
file is still there and is pushed down, in several steps, while the new
lines are being inserted.  I don't think any incorrect things happen; it
just looks spastic.  I don't understand how the interface to the scroll
window works, but it looks to me like you are inserting the new things
and then deleting the old things, rather than first deleting and then inserting.

(2) ZMAIL should be more resilient to random things in Profile files.
It itself generated this (define-universe nil  nil nil) [due to a
previously-reported bug in mousing "abort" in the New Universe creation
window from profile mode], and it got an error while trying to read this
file, from which I didn't know how to recover.

(3) It should also be resilient about the various kinds of file system errors
that can happen; mainly these are of the form "host is not responding" or
something which czn be caused by system crashes or powered-down unmodified
Chaos trancievers.  Even if the net is fixed, hosts can still be down.

I think that ZMAIL should NEVER enter the error handler under conditions
in which there has not bee a bug in ZMAIL.  Ideally it should be aware
of which errors can be caused by each subroutine it calls, and it should
have handlers to deal with them.  The file system ought to be signalling
well-advertised condition names (and if it doesn't, it should), so that
ZMAIL can set up handlers.

(4) Once ZMAIL has bombed out, I don't know how to create a fresh ZMAIL or
to tell it to start all over, reinitializing everything.  I have to cold boot.
Is there a way to make it start afresh?